Posted on 05/18/2004 9:53:31 PM PDT by FairOpinion
DUBAI: An unknown group called the Arab Resistance Movement may have laid claim to the murder of the Iraqi governing council leader, but he was blown up days after a call by Osama bin Laden to target the Iraqi allies of the US-led occupying forces.
The "Arab Resistance Movement/Rasheed Brigades" took responsibility for Monday's assassination of interim head Ezzedine Salim in a statement posted on an Iraqi website.
US Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of military operations in Iraq, said the coalition was examining the claim, but its first suspicions pointed to Jordanian extremist Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.
"We don't know if that's a cover for the Zarqawi network or it's an actual organisation," Kimmitt said.
But he saw the hallmarks of a Zarqawi operation.
"All of those indicators, suicidal, spectacular, symbolic, line up here but we have this new group that has come in and we don't know who this group is, we're going to have to do some analysis on it," he admitted.
Zarqawi has been strongly linked to bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terror movement and has a 10-million-dollar price on his head from the United States.
An Internet audio message posted 10 days ago, which the CIA labeled "likely" to have come from bin Laden, offered high rewards for the killing of top US and coalition officials and added that Iraqis were duty-bound to fight the interim government.
"It is the duty of Iraqis to launch jihad, not only against the crusaders but also against the government of apostates and those who assist it," the message said.
"The pretended transfer of sovereignty is only a manifest trick ... to drug people and to end the armed resistance" in Iraq, it claimed.
However Dhia Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on Islamist groups, told AFP that while the message may have encouraged the attack on Salim's motorcade, the operation did not bear the stamp of Al-Qaeda.
"The attack carries rather the mark of Iraqi guerrillas who, like Palestinian movements, identify the names of suicide bombers, which Al-Qaeda does not do," he said.
Rashwan admitted he had never heard of the Arab Resistance Movement, but noted it appeared to have had local logistical support to strike so devastatingly against the Iraqi leader's convoy outside the coalition headquarters despite high security as the June 30 date for the handover of power nears.
"This morning, two heroic members of the Arab Resistance Movement/Rasheed Brigades -- Ali Khaled al-Jabburi and Mohammad Hassan al-Samarrai -- carried out a qualitative heroic operation that led to the killing of the traitor and mercenary Ezzedine Salim," said a statement posted on www.anbaar.net.
"The Brigades pledge to the people of our nation that they will (continue to) struggle until the liberation of glorious Iraq and precious Palestine," added the statement, the authenticity of which could not be verified.
The website, "Al-Anbar, voice of all Iraqis, direct from Baghdad", on Tuesday published a strong disclaimer for the message, saying it could not take responsibility for the content posted by a subscriber.
For Rashwan the car bombing did not follow the "technique" of either Zarqawi or Al-Qaeda.
"It comes within the framework of the accelerating rhythm of operations by the Iraqi guerrilla," he said.
In the murky underworld of anti-coalition forces in Iraq, links between various shadowy groups remain unclear.
The US Central Intelligence Agency said Thursday there was a "high probability" that Zarqawi was shown in a video last week beheading US businessman Nicholas Berg, who vanished in Iraq in April.
And a voice message purported to be from Zarqawi released on the Internet on April 6 called for more attacks on the coalition in Iraq and the Shiites, who were branded "allies of the Jews and Americans."
Salim, who headed the Dawa -- a Shiite religious party -- in the southern city of Basra, took over the Governing Council's rotating presidency on May 1 for a month's tenure.
The council has been fiercely criticised by insurgents fighting coalition troops who accuse it of collaborating with the US-led occupation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.